Not even death could make these men alike
who give their names to different gravestones
or shout them into the sun’s wind that rubs them out:
some more dust for a fresh gust of wind.
Here, by the sea that is just like marble,
between this double row of bowing cypresses,
peace rules, a peace struggling to shatter itself,
ripping the burial parchments in a thousand pieces
to reveal the face of an ancient arrogance
and to laugh at the dust.
—Enrique Lihn
“Cemetery in Punta Arenas”
The Dark Room and Other Poems
1978
